When should you ask a sick colleague to go home?

A chief physician says colleagues can be urged to go home if fever or severe cold symptoms leave them unfit for work, DR reports.

Anette Holm, chief physician at the Department of Clinical Microbiology at Odense University Hospital, says fever is the clearest sign. A colleague who looks unusually flushed or exhausted may also be unwell enough to go home.

A runny nose can be another warning sign, especially if it is so severe that the person has trouble working. Persistent coughing is harder to judge: people may continue to cough after recovering from a virus, even when they are no longer contagious.

Holm says it is reasonable to suggest that someone go home if they are coughing uncontrollably and also have symptoms such as watery eyes and a heavy runny nose. But colleagues cannot make that decision for them; they can only encourage them to leave.

People working in healthcare should take extra care because they come into contact with patients whose immune systems are weakened. Many people in Denmark are currently dealing with rhinovirus, a contagious common cold virus, according to the Statens Serum Institut.